OK, All you survivalists and hunters
our there, time to make sure you are NOT dooming yourselves and your children.
Here are a series of articles and correspondences from various sources
including the mainstream and personal testimonials.

MEAT itself is not bad. It is what RENDERING
has done to meat that is the problem. And JUST because these practices
MAY have been curtailed (not stopped), DOES NOT MEAN the long incubation
periods (for Mad Cow) are over.

Deer have become contaminated eating
FARM FEED. Dont just throw your hands up in the air and say, "Oh well,
there is nothing we can do," READ all this, and more, so you know
what is REALLY going on, EITHER WAY.

YES, MAASIVE AMOUNTS of poisoned CATS,
poisoned DOGS, ROAD KILL, DEAD FARM ANIMALS, RESTAURANT GREASE, varmits,
etc. DO end up in FARM ANIMAL FEED, and PET FOOD and YOU. If you dont believe
it, I WILL PROVE IT TOO YOU with documentation.

NEVER MISTAKE the HUMAN BODY's ability
to withstand INCREDIBLE ABUSE for "See no damage yet". God designed
us well, but not beyond such nightmarish abuse. He gave us a brain too,
USE IT.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madcow
<- EXCELLENT NOVA SHOW http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2505braineater.html
http://mad-cow.org/~tom/cwd_cattle.html <- Site to see

Hunter writes in:

Colorado correspondent. 2-16-98

The 2/14/98 Denver Post had an article
on CWD. The interesting thing is that a hunter who thought he was to have
been notified within 3 weeks if his deer was positive for CWD was notified
after 6 weeks, and the deer meat was ground up with lots of other deer
meat and turned to sausage. I know that when a guy gets his animals, he
tastes some of it right quick.

Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease eats holes
in your brain and causes you to stagger, twitch, cry out in your sleep,
lose control of your bodily functions, go mad and die. The disease may
have been hidden in a hamburger you ate in Europe ten years ago, a corneal
transplant or your own genetic makeup. It can incubate for anywhere between
five and thirty years and will make itself known only when you're within
months of death.

Two Denver residents died of CJD -- a
cousin of mad-cow disease -- this year.

And Colorado is the epicenter for another
related malady -- chronic wasting disease, or CWD -- among mule deer and
elk. In affected parts of the state, the incidence among deer is between
4 and 6 percent; it is 1 percent in elk. At the height of the mad-cow epidemic
in England, the incidence of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE,
in cattle in that country was less than 1 percent.

Last February, Chris Melani, a Longmont
hunter, took the head of a deer he'd shot to the Colorado Division of Wildlife
for testing. He was told the DOW would contact him within three weeks if
the deer had chronic wasting disease. When he heard nothing, he and his
family ate some of the meat. He took what was left to a packing plant,
where, he says, "It got mixed up with a bunch of other people's deer
and made into venison sausage" -- ending up on who knows how many
dinner plates.

Six weeks after turning in the head,
Melani learned his deer was among forty that had tested positive for CWD
last season. "They said it was okay," he says. "They weren't
going to tell anyone else about it."

"We, among my ranching friends here,
have already shared reports of wasting disease seen and killing deer on
our properties here [in Utah]. And as an old dairy rancher this should
be no surprise. Deer always scavenged my feeder bins when snow restricted
their own foraging; so deer have been eating animal renderings in the "cattle"
feed all along (including not only cow, sheep [scrapie] and all other animal
"bypass", but also themselves in highway kills and deer and elk
dressings from hunter processings commercially done) .

Also D.N.R. (Division of Natural Resources),
State Fish and Game will also on occasions feed donated or purchased (animal
fat/protein enriched) meal directly to snowbound, or feed and cold stressed
deer and elk.

So reverse logic clearly dictates that
if the deer and elk, which live free and longer than most cattle, are expressing
and dying with spongiform encephalopathy while eating the shared renderings
normally meant for cattle, and also associating with them; then as with
all other animal pathogens, reason mandates that TSE "prions"
are also shared; but since cattle raised for food do not live long enough
for visible symptoms to appear, or if any health failure symptoms do begin
to appear, the animal is quickly "processed" for product or rendering
before gross disease expression renders the animal absolutely unsalable,
so BSE or "cattle" wasting disease must never be noted or recorded.

And lets be economically real here, if
it is ever suspected, no rancher or feeder would lay himself open to having
his entire herd culled for BSE at a potential loss several hundreds to
near a thousand dollars per unit animal, and neither would the livestock
dependant industries, including pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, soaps and beyond,
and the bureaucracies payed for and serving them all.

But any honest veterinary biologist knows
this one is the clincher on TSE and BSE, and that other neurologically
damaged biological animal in the picture - man - and his CJD!

To eat or not to eat is the hunter's
question By Charlie Meyers. Denver Post Outdoor Editor. Feb. 3, 1998

Whether Oprah Winfrey is guilty of defaming
beef or, indeed, whether such a thing is actually possible, has provided
the nation's media and comedians - not always the same - a gold mine of
material. But the debate about beef or, more to the point, Colorado's deer
and elk, as a threat to human health is no joking matter. Whether it is
called mad cow disease in Great Britain or wasting disease by Colorado
biologists, the family of pathogens called transmissible spongiform encephalopathy
poses a serious, and suddenly highly visible, concern. British researchers
linked the bovine form of the disease with an extremely rare, yet fatal,
disease in humans, touching off the current furor.

Colorado game managers have known of
wasting disease for several decades and recently detected an unusual problem
with deer in the area north and west of Fort Collins and along the South
Platte River in the eastern plains.

Termed wasting disease for its degenerative
traits, the malady belongs to the TSE class of diseases along with mad
cow disease and scrapie, which infects sheep. Until officials in Great
Britain began slaughtering more than a million beef cattle and before Oprah
inserted her very high profile into the matter, nobody paid much attention.

This general apathy persisted despite
the efforts of the Pure Food Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit
public interest group dealing with food safety. Ron Cummins, the group's
national director, flatly accuses the U.S. Department of Agriculture of
a coverup to protect the nation's beef industry, particularly from a loss
of exports to jittery overseas markets.

Cummins further suspects that TSE, in
its various forms, may actually be the culprit in deaths typically diagnosed
as Alzheimer's. He cites two studies showing that 5 and 13 percent of Alzheimer's
deaths actually involved TSE, which literally eats holes in the brain.
Autopsies are not routinely performed in deaths attributed to Alzheimer's.

Cummins also believes the Colorado Division
of Wildlife also hasn't taken the matter seriously enough.

"At the height of the mad cow epidemic
in Britain, only 1-2 percent of the cattle were infected. Compare that
to 6 percent of the mule deer in the target area in Colorado and this is
very, very serious,'' Cummins said. "I think it is prudent to say
not to eat the animals until we know what's going on.'' Actually, the figure
for deer tested in 1997 was 4 percent, down two points from the previous
year. Only 1 percent of elk tested positive for wasting disease in 1996
and only one animal tested positive in 1997. This caused Division of Wildlife
officials to totally remove elk from the requirement that hunters submit
the heads of animals killed in 20 separate game management units, a requisite
that still holds for deer. For the 1998 season, deer hunters in units 7,
8, 9, 18, 19, 20, 28, 29, 37, 371, 87, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 191
and 951 must submit heads to the division within five days of the kill.
Details on where to deposit the deer heads will be listed in the regulations
brochure available in March. DOW further warns hunters against eating any
animal that appears sick, to wear rubber gloves when field dressing game,
minimize handling brain or spinal tissues and avoid eating brains or nerve
tissue.

Cummins believe these measures don't
go far enough. This conflicts directly with the belief of John Pape, an
epidemiologist with the Colorado Department of Health. "There is no
indication that chronic wasting disease is a threat to human health,''
declared Pape, who did concur with the DOW precautions. DOW officials point
out that neither scrapie, which has been a study subject for two centuries,
or wasting disease, have been linked to human illness. Although officials
are certain animals west of the Continental Divide remain uninfected, they'll
continue to conduct tests across the entire state.

Chronic wasting disease: deer-to-cattle
link worry By Martha Bellisle, AP. 1-24-98. ESTES PARK, Colo. -- A story
about chronic wasting disease affecting wildlife in the Rocky Mountains
on the border of Colorado and Wyoming, one of only two spots in the world,
the story says, where the disease has appeared. The U.S. National Institutes
of Health is investigating because mad cow disease, similar to the chronic
wasting disease that has struck mule deer and elk, has been linked to a
brain-wasting malady in humans.

Byron Caughey, biochemist at the NIH's
Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont., was quoted as saying, "We
know there's a link between the diseases, not a causal link necessarily,
but they're the same kind of disease. Of great interest is whether we have
to worry about it being transmitted into other animal hosts, whether cattle
or humans."

The story cites Todd Malmsbury, spokesman
for the Colorado Division of Wildlife in Denver, as saying that about 6
per cent of mule deer in the area of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming
suffer from chronic wasting disease, or CWD, and there are an estimated
550,000 mule deer, a brown, white-tailed species with big ears in all of
Colorado.

The story notes that wildlife officials
require hunters to turn in the heads of deer or elk they've killed. If
the brains test positive, the hunters are advised to dump the meat. Malmsbury
was cited as saying that 40 deer turned in during the past hunting season
tested positive.

Mike Miller, a state wildlife veterinarian
was cited as saying the NIH along with federal and state agencies have
launched three studies to determine its transmissibility to cattle.

In Iowa, researchers are injecting brain
material of infected wildlife into the brains of cattle. At the University
of Wyoming, infected brain material is being given to cattle orally.

In addition, researchers are investigating
whether the disease can be spread through contact, letting cattle live
with deer herds that have contained infected animals.

Mad Cow-Like Disease Found In Deer By
Martha Bellisle, AP. 1-24-98. ESTES PARK, Colo. (AP) -- The emaciated
mule deer stares blankly into space. Then, stumbling in small circles,
it falls over dead, another victim of chronic wasting disease. It is a
grim sight for wildlife officials working in the Rocky Mountains on the
border of Colorado and Wyoming, one of only two spots in the world where
the disease has appeared. For health officials, a frightening question
must be answered: Will this terrible illness cross over to the human population?
The National Institutes of Health is investigating because mad cow disease,
similar to the chronic wasting disease that has struck mule deer and elk,
has been linked to a brain-wasting malady in humans -- Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease -- that has killed 20 people in Europe.

"We know there's a link between
the diseases, not a causal link necessarily, but they're the same kind
of disease," said Byron Caughey, biochemist at the NIH's Rocky Mountain
Laboratories in Hamilton, Mont. "Of great interest is whether we have
to worry about it being transmitted into other animal hosts, whether cattle
or humans," he said. ... No one has become sick from carrying the
wasting disease -- but wildlife officials require hunters to turn in the
heads of deer or elk they've killed. If the brains test positive, the hunters
are advised to dump the meat. Forty deer turned in during the past hunting
season tested positive, Malmsbury said.

While the NIH [NIAID] is interested in
whether the wasting disease can jump to humans, federal and state agencies
have launched three studies to determine its transmissibility to cattle,
said Mike Miller, a state wildlife veterinarian.

In Iowa, researchers are injecting brain
material of infected wildlife into the brains of cattle. At the University
of Wyoming, infected brain material is being given to cattle orally. [The
first experiment gave transmission, the second has not -- webmaster].

In addition, researchers are investigating
whether the disease can be spread through contact, letting cattle live
with deer herds that have contained infected animals. Many scientists believe
cattle in Britain became infected with mad cow disease by eating parts
of sheep with a similar ailment, a practice outlawed in the United States,
he said. Mad cow disease was first diagnosed in 1986. No case of mad cow
disease has been reported in the United States.

Between March 1981 and June 1995, a neurological
disease characterized histologically by spongiform encephalopathy was diagnosed
in 49 free-ranging cervids from northcentral Colorado (USA). Mule deer
(Odocoileus hemionus) were the primary species affected and accounted for
41 (84%) of the 49 cases, but six Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni)
and two white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) were also affected.

Clinical signs included emaciation, excessive
salivation, behavioral changes, ataxia, and weakness. Emaciation with total
loss of subcutaneous and abdominal adipose tissue and serous atrophy of
remaining fat depots were the only consistent gross findings. Spongiform
encephalopathy characterized by microcavitation of gray matter, intraneuronal
vacuolation and neuronal degeneration was observed microscopically in all
cases. Scrapie-associated prion protein or an antigenically indistinguishable
protein was demonstrated in brains from 26 affected animals, 10 using an
immunohistochemical staining procedure, nine using electron microscopy,
and seven using Western blot.

NOVA TV show: 'Brain Eater'/ 1-2-98 A
transcript of the show is available online or the tape may be ordered for
$20.00 from NOVA at 1-800-255-9424. NOVA has an excellent page on mad cow
show. Review: the show was quite good

The Nova show featured David Bolton re-enacting
the discovering of Griffiths paper, a rare image of Griffiths himself,
Ironside re-enacting the chain-mail glove and diving bell autopsy, Merz
in macabre eyeshadow re-enacting the discovery of SAF, Suzette Priola wielding
a noisy pipette, a less-chipper-than-in-real-life Linda Detweiler herding
cows, Marsh and sadly affected mink, Zeidler re-living home visits to nvCJD
families, Collinge fretting over the 18 million at-risk met-met people
in the UK, the famous vignette of Oprah and her worried audience, a still
of Prusiner, Brown and the TSE buried for 3 years in garden soil, and so
on. The part I caught was protein-only though viral controversy was mentioned.

Paul Brown, frequently represented by
activists here as a wimp on BSE, gave a solid presentation, saying bovine
TSE in the US was likely low but not zero but not high either and that
the US would have to rethink its position if nvCJD really takes off in
the UK. Brown also said there was no absolutely evidence for scrapie-to-humans.
Unfortunately, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence -- the studies
to date are aenemic.

The show, while discussing the US feed
ban, pointed out the loopholes still in it, for example cow blood can still
be fed back to cows. Muscle and blood were said to be ok but this was qualified
as not definitive. Much of the show seemed a year or so old as there were
just 10 victims.

Somewhere they got some good outside
advice on this. NOVA got a lot of stuff more or less right; the show would
be satisfactory for a classroom. It was balanced without pulling punches.
The spooky music and the steven king voice-over put an ominous spin on
just about everything, from the sheep dog to the young people eating burgers.

The one bonehead thing I saw was not
the producer's fault: someone gave them a molecular model of cross-beta
fibril that was straight, not coiled. I had to go over to the Architecture
School to get the software to do this right, it amounts to nested spiral
staircases. I posted something in line with the diffraction data at a while
back. The conversion animation of normal by rogue was well-handled though
the beta sheet hydrogen-bonding was a stretch.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/madcow
<- EXCELLENT NOVA SHOW http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2505braineater.html
http://mad-cow.org/~tom/cwd_cattle.html <- Site to see